ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Greg Ryan stood on the sideline of the Plymouth-Canton Educational Park Varsity Soccer Field on a Friday night in September 2008, pacing back and forth, as the Michigan women's soccer team took on Iowa.

Six telephone poles, each equipped with what seemed like four 100-watt bulbs surrounded the field, providing just enough light for the players to see the ball as it flew around the pitch. In what counted as a home game, the Wolverines were hosting the Hawkeyes on a dimly lit, high school field in Plymouth, a town more than 20 miles from campus.

"It was almost like a game where you needed to pull the cars up and turn all the lights on to see the ball," Ryan said. "The scoring was 0-0 — the reason why was because nobody could see the ball to kick it properly. It was like a shadow rolling on the field"

One year earlier, Ryan had coached the United States National Women's Soccer team to a third-place finish in the 2007 World Cup. He would be ousted as coach after the team performed below expectations in the tournament, a falling out that was highlighted by the benching of starting goalkeeper Hope Solo — an incident that overshadowed the 45-1-9 record he compiled during his three-year stint as the head coach.

Yet six years later, Ryan is showing not only that he can coach a team, but build one, too. This year Michigan (15-3-1) has set program records for conference wins in a season (9), most wins vs. ranked teams in one season (4), longest road winning streak (6, and counting). The Wolverines are seventh in the NSCAA Coaches poll, their highest national ranking ever.

Those numbers are in stark contrast to the ones compiled in the season before Ryan's arrival in February, 2008, when the Wolverines won one of the final 12 games. Upon accepting the head coach position at Michigan, Ryan was tasked with the responsibility of overhauling the program. He took the job with the knowledge that a new soccer stadium, which was in development before he arrived, wouldn't be completed until 2010.

What he didn't expect, however, was that construction complications would prevent the Wolverines women's and men's teams from using the actual soccer field, giving them no place to call home and creating a weekly adventure for the coaching staff.

"Each week I'd go to (assistant coach) Dean (Duerst) and say, 'Can you make some calls and see if you can find us a field to play on?' " Ryan said. "It was that crazy"

Some nights they would practice on the outfield grass of the Michigan baseball stadium, and on other nights they would secure a recreational field on the school's north campus.

And when home games rolled around, who knew where they might play. They hosted matches on Eastern Michigan's campus and on that high school field in Plymouth, and even played a few matches on a muddy pitch adjacent to where the U-M Soccer Complex now stands.

The Wolverines played just two matches in Ann Arbor that year, essentially playing a 17-game road schedule.

Ryan, though, was more concerned with his players than with the team's facilities. The first year, he cut a lot of players — either because of attitude problems, fitness issues or just because they didn't have enough talent and were bringing down the level of training, Ryan said — and replaced them with walk-ons to fill out the roster.

"There was a three-week period during my second year where four or five players just quit," said Haley Kopmeyer, a four-year starter and All-American goalkeeper under Ryan. "Every few days I would come into practice and learn that another girl had left the team."

Slowly but surely, Ryan remade the team, laying a foundation that attracted a higher level of talent to the program. The completion of the U-M Soccer Complex helped lure better players, as well.

With a new stadium and a recruiting class with multiple players rated among the top 100 nationally on campus in fall 2010, Michigan began to make strides on the field. After winning just four and six games, respectively in Ryan's first two seasons, they won 10, 9 and 16 in years following. Last season, Ryan's fifth at Michigan, they reached the NCAA Tournament's third round for the first time since 2003 and third time ever.

But nothing shows how far the program has come quite like this year's squad.

Despite losing Kopmeyer, owner of almost every Michigan goalkeeping record, the Wolverines are ranked seventh in the nation in goals-against-average (0.51) and 10th in save percentage (.875), led by a freshman goalie and a stellar defense allowing less than four shots-on-goal per game. Half of that 2010 signing class was named first-team All-Big Ten on Tuesday.

Partly due to those players, Michigan is on pace to break the single-season record of 18 wins set by the Wolverines' 1997 team.

And maybe most importantly, the Wolverines have conquered their biggest demon. On Oct. 13 they beat Penn State — a program that has dominated the Big Ten by winning 14 out of the last 15 conference titles — for the first time in 13 meetings and first ever time in State College. That victory was part of a program-record eight-game win streak that ended Wednesday with a loss to Iowa in the Big Ten tournament.

Nonetheless, six years after a three-win season, the Wolverines are competing for much more.

"He went to Michigan and has done what he does best," said Billy McNicol, an assistant for Team USA under Ryan, "develop young players and win, and win a lot."